The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector is rapidly transforming on a global level and is now being primarily driven by technology. 

To thrive in the world of digitalization and hybrid working, the financial sector is having to redefine service assurance – necessitating a heavy reliance on unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) systems and services.

In a comprehensive new eBook, produced in conjunction with global market intelligence firm IDC, we reveal the impact of digital transformation on the BFSI sector, with a spotlight on the Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions.

We reveal the key foundational pillars of the future of UC&C in the financial services industry, and discuss the ways in which long-standing business methodologies are changing in the face of unprecedented digital growth.

Four foundational UC&C pillars

Pillar 1: Always-ton availability

The future of the financial services sector depends on UC&C. This means ensuring that services are available 24/7 for everyone, including customers and potential clients, partners and stakeholders, vendors and employees.

Pillar 2: Choice of deployment options

Deployment of services needs to be less complex, and support cloud, hybrid and on-premises platforms.

Pillar 3: Openness and compatibility

It’s mission critical that organizations have access to full view and control of multi-vendor UC&C environments and infrastructures, and that systems are interoperable.

Pillar 4: Transparency and visibility

Organizations need to quickly identify bottlenecks, and have easy access to granular insights for root cause analysis and troubleshooting. Third party monitoring solutions are no longer a ‘maybe’ consideration; they’re now a crucial element of every organization’s UC&C infrastructure.

The changing role of UC&C in the BFSI sector

The financial services industry is already integrating business applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) with video collaboration – via APIs, or communications platform as a service (CPaaS) – and this will continue to grow as organizations are viewing these integrations as a core requirement for many businesses today.

In the APAC region, the speed with which digital interaction volumes are increasing means that financial organizations are competing head-to-head in a quest to optimize operations and strengthen their customer relationships. 62% of financial institutions say customer experience transformation is a top priority.

This customer focus is also a priority in MEA, where digital interactions have exploded. Over 70% of financial institutions in the region plan to invest in scaling up their digital platform experiences in the next 12-18 months.

How organizations are prioritizing employee and customer experience

Many financial organizations are increasing investment into new capabilities such as AI and machine learning, to enhance the employee and customer experiences of integrated unified communications.

To personalize customer experiences and deliver tangible benefits, organizations need an in-depth understanding of their customers, beginning with identifying critical data.

With the complexity of omni-channel journeys, and the huge volumes of data from different sources, this requires robust monitoring and performance management tools to provide crucial insights.

A lack of fully integrated data prevents personalization. In the APAC region, many organizations report that their data is still siloed, preventing integration, or that data is integrated on an ad hoc basis. As a result, financial organizations are designing AI-powered data ecosystems that can better handle customer information to drive business outcomes.

While in MEA, 42% of BFSI organizations are significantly increasing their investments into personalization by leveraging AI.

The need to protect their UC&C investment with 3rd party monitoring tools

The increase in digital adoption since 2020, has driven financial services to realize the criticality of proactively monitoring all interactions to ensure a consistent customer experience.

Transforming the customer experience is the top business priority for 62% of banking and financial services institutions. The acceleration of digitalization is widening the competitive landscape and raising the bar in providing seamless omni-channel interactions for banking customers.

To overcome the regulatory and operational challenges and add value in the face of digital transformation, UC&C monitoring provides solutions that can empower financial organizations like never before:

Real-time visibility and alerting

Being able to see inside each user’s experience provides actionable performance information for faster issue resolution.

End-to-end visibility

Real-time visibility enables proactive troubleshooting and reporting across multi-vendor platforms.

Outside-in testing

Proactive testing of UC&C environments provides clear, comprehensive insights into performance, availability and quality to optimize customer experience.

Regulatory compliance

Call recording ensures accurate management practices to support all compliance requirements.

Key takeaways

• Emerging technology is driving a growing adoption of UC&C platforms within the BFSI sector, which is poised to optimize operations and strengthen their customer relationships.
• Financial organizations are increasing investment into new capabilities such as AI/ML, to enhance the employee and customer experiences of integrated unified communications.
• UC&C monitoring with third party tools is becoming mission critical for the protection and success of omni-channel interactions for customers.